Some plugins are crucial and must work predictably, so it’s better not to update them automatically, other plugins are fine to be updated in the background. Right now, there is only a global toggle to switch automatic updates in the Package Manager.
This gave me trouble, I think it would be useful to display installed plugins as a table where the “automatic update” option will be in one column so it’s easy to browse, change only selected, or change all.
@wim I just ran into this same predicament and thought to look here to see if anyone else started a thread on this topic… As this was 1.5 years ago, and I see that the YouTrack page you linked to has RH-78913 still as Open, is there any way to bump this?